


Life Model Decoy

by forthegreatergood



Series: Robot Doubles for Everybody [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Life Model Decoys, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, Open Relationships, Oral Sex, Pining, Tony Stark Has Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-11
Updated: 2018-05-11
Packaged: 2019-05-05 01:49:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14606520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forthegreatergood/pseuds/forthegreatergood
Summary: Post-Civil War.The team's a shadow of its former self.  Tony's barely holding it together.  What difference will a few more bad decisions involving robots make?In Tony's head, the real Steve was turning away, face scarlet, hands curled into fists, in love with someone else, angry with Tony for making the offer when Tony was in love with someone else, too.  In his head, there was a wall of preemptive sarcasm and bitterness and detachment just high enough to slow him down in case he ever got stupid enough to think about propositioning the real Steve.Here and now, an LMD only distinguishable from the real thing by the fact that Tony could say “please” and that he could say “okay” was fitting his fingertips into the dip in Tony’s spine and holding Tony close and kissing him back.





	Life Model Decoy

**Author's Note:**

> All characters property of Marvel.
> 
> Not beta-read. Please post any noticed errors in the comments, and they'll get fixed.

Tony rolled over onto his back, sweat cooling on his skin and his heart slowing to something closer to normal. Steve’s warm bulk was reassuringly solid against his right side, and everything was… fine. This was fine, perfectly normal, perfectly _understandable_ , given the circumstances. It was a little weird, sure, but it would be fucked up if things weren’t weird, wouldn’t it? It was a weird situation. Coping mechanisms could be perfectly healthy while also being a little outside the box. 

Talking was off the table, really--there were things two people in their situation just couldn’t _say_ and expect it to make a difference. Retro-framing hadn’t worked, which in hindsight Tony supposed wasn’t terribly surprising. His parents were dead and gone, and the only thing he could change about that was how he related to his memories of them. Steve and Sam and Natasha and Clint were still alive, and he could jerk himself off as much as he wanted about how things had gone down--it didn’t get him any closer to fixing it. 

So here he was, doing his best to get his head on straight, and if his methods were a little unorthodox, so be it. He didn’t owe anyone an explanation for how he got there, so long as he got there. He certainly didn’t need to defend his choices… to… anyone…

Tony rubbed his eyes and licked his lips.

“Did you turn yourself off?” he asked flatly, pushing himself up on his elbows.

There was a faint mechanical whine, just on the edge of hearing. Or maybe he was imagining it. Hard to tell, anymore.

Steve’s eyes flickered open, a heartbeat too late. He shot Tony an irritated look. “Could you please pick a relational protocol? Toggling between modes wastes a huge amount of RAM.”

“Well, I’m sorry, but it’s just a little rude to--”

“Roll over and go to sleep after sex?” Steve cut him off, eyebrows raised.

“Go into _sleep mode_ and start _defragging your hard drive_ after sex,” Tony groused.

“That’s a completely inaccurate representation of what I was doing, and you know it.” Steve rolled his eyes. And he was right, at least about that. They’d been over this before. “But fine, have it your way. Did you want me to put off routine cleaning and maintenance protocols until you leave for your three o’clock appointment, or would you prefer to be alone now?”

Tony stared at the ceiling and took a slow, deep breath. He was pretty sure it was a bad sign that he couldn’t go more than an hour in the same room with Steve without an argument breaking out, even when it was a version of Steve meant to be compliant and pleasant and let the government pretend the real Captain America hadn’t kicked the doors off one of their blacksites and told them to go fuck themselves.

“I’m sorry,” Tony said slowly, not looking at him. “For future reference, I’d prefer it if you didn’t power down to a noticeable extent around me.”

“Noted.” 

Those unblinking blue eyes focused on him, and Tony wondered if it was his imagination, again. Steve doubtless blinked a perfectly normal amount, and the LMD in his bed had doubtless been programmed to blink a perfectly normal amount. It was only because Tony knew and had to find something to pick at that it seemed off. That _he_ seemed off.

“And it would be nice if you waited to shower until after I left.”

Steve visibly weighed the statement, deciding what to do about it, and Tony closed his eyes. He’d seen that look on Steve’s--the real Steve, the flesh-and-bone Steve, the Steve he’d beaten bloody in a Siberian bunker--face often enough that it was both perfectly expected and deeply surreal to see it here and now. 

“Okay.”

Tony felt the mattress shift and the blanket under him pull taut as Steve rolled onto his side, and Tony relaxed, relief he wouldn’t admit to loosening his muscles. There was some swirl of emotions he couldn’t untangle roiling his gut, some anger at the unfairness of it all. He’d rebuilt himself in a cave in a fucking desert, surrounded by people who’d have just as soon put a bullet in the back of his head as look at him if it wasn’t for what he could make. Now he was home, surrounded by every resource he could ask for, and everything he touched blew up in his face. Steve’s hand settled over his heart, warm and heavy where the arc reactor had been, once, when they’d first met. Tony swallowed, tears stinging his eyes. He buried his face in the crook of Steve’s neck and wrapped his arms around Steve’s ribs, breathing slow and deep to keep from crying as Steve stroked his back gently.

So maybe it wasn’t as fine as it could be. It was still miles better than any of the alternatives.

* * *

Pepper grimaced and kneaded her temples, and Tony shifted uncomfortably.

“What?” he asked, his shoulders tensing reflexively. He forced himself to uncoil, forced himself to smile. “It’s perfect. It’s an exact replica.”

“I just…” She gave him a searching look, and Tony turned away, feeling stripped to the wire by it. “Is that a good idea? It feels really--it feels like a weird thing to do.”

“Captain America has a shield. It’s kind of his thing,” Tony explained, repeating the directive he’d gotten from one of Ross’s lackeys, too bright and brittle and she could hear it in his voice, he knew she could. “So now their Captain America robot has a shield, to go with his uniform and his carefully curated list of semi-public appearances.”

“It feels weird to hear you talk about him--” She stopped herself, almost flinching. “About it that way.”

“It’s a robot,” Tony said. His palms were sweating, and he wanted to pace. She’d know how knotted up this had him if he started pacing, though, probably already knew he wanted to, knew what it meant.

“Tony.” That gentle, inviting tone. _Talk to me. Tell me about it. Let me pull on the last thread keeping your skin on and your guts from spilling all over the carpet._

He sat down next to her, and she put her arm around his waist. They’d wanted him to refurbish Steve’s shield, the one Steve had dropped when Tony had tried to say “Stay.”, tried to say “Don’t leave me.”, and instead had said “That doesn’t belong to you.” 

Tony hadn’t been thinking when he’d opened the crate, for some reason hadn’t been expecting the punch to the gut it had been to see the scored shield Steve had left behind like a limb to match the cybernetic arm Tony had sheared off Barnes. They’d torn each other apart like sharks in a feeding frenzy, barely able to distinguish between the living and the dead with so much blood in the water. The thought of touching it had been more than he could bear; the thought of the LMD walking around with it for invitation-only press junkets was nauseating.

He took a deep, shaky breath. “He’s a robot.”

“He seems real.” A statement and a question rolled into one, probing. “I was talking to him the other day. I said something funny--I mean, I said something Steve would have thought was funny. He laughed, and it was.” Pepper shivered, her arm tightening around him. “I wouldn’t have known it wasn’t really him.”

“No, it’s--” Tony swallowed, his mouth dry. Sweaty palms and a dry mouth, because why not? “It’s what he’s programmed for. LMDs wouldn’t work if they couldn’t pass for their originals in close quarters.”

It wasn’t perfect. The LMD was too still, during periods of inactivity. Too quiet, when debates were happening around him. Too docile, at least compared to the real Steve. Tony figured the program’s success was largely due to its obscurity; if nobody knew to worry about a business contact or a dealer or a diplomat being replaced by a robotic lookalike, it was easy enough to dismiss any blips or irregularities as someone having an off day or being in a bad mood. 

Then again, maybe that was all in his own head. Would he have really noticed if Steve was suddenly that much less likely to contradict him? Would he have clocked it when Steve’s fingers stopped twitching for a pencil and a sheet of paper, when Steve’s eyes stopped following the way light fell across things? Would he have questioned it if Steve kissed him back instead of sputtering about working things out with Pepper? Wouldn’t he have just gone with it, grateful that the universe was letting him have something for once instead of taking it away?

It wasn’t a flattering question. He supposed he was grateful that the LMD with Steve’s face and eighty percent of Steve’s personality had bawled Tony out for treating him like a robot and then expecting him to act like a human within an hour of being introduced. It had kept everybody honest, to an extent.

“I was thinking,” Pepper said softly, “that we could try to keep him here. With the rest of the team, on base. It would look better.”

Tony rubbed his knuckles. _The rest of the team._ They were a shadow of what they’d been. Rhodey hadn’t been cleared to fly again. Yet, maybe ever. There was a dose of the new and improved and completely untested-in-humans Extremis waiting, just in case, and Tony had never identified so strongly with an alcoholic having a secret bottle of emergency booze stowed someplace safe. Bruce was gone. Lost, maybe dead. The only real hope Tony had for him was lodged deep in the Hulk’s impenetrable green hide, and wasn’t that a cosmic joke? Steve had sucked half the roster down with him when he’d gone under, and Vision was drifting after them whether he knew it or not. Would Thor even want to work with what was left, if he came back?

“Sure.” Tony managed a laugh. It came out like a wheeze, like his throat was closing. “Why not get LMDs of Nat and Sam while we’re at it? Bring Clint out of retirement with a mechanical replica. Should we get one of Wanda, or do you think Vision would prefer to make his own?”

Pepper stared at him, her eyes wide, and Tony froze.

“That was sarcasm,” he blurted.

“No, it wasn’t.”

“It was supposed to be.” 

He could feel his lungs collapsing, his chest caving in. There was some version of himself, some bright-eyed fucking idiot who’d thought that the worst thing that could ever happen to him was a car crash ten years in his past, that he just needed to find and crawl back inside of. If he could do that, he’d be… not _happy_. He wasn’t made for happy. _Whole_. He’d be someone who just was, instead of someone who was held together with baling wire and duct tape and the people who really knew him agreeing not to look at him too closely in case it all came apart and couldn’t be put back together again because too much was missing.

Pepper kissed the top of his head. “You need him, Tony.”

“He’s a robot.” Robots and suits and other people were--had to be--wants, not needs. If they were needs, he might as well find a hole, pitch himself headlong into it, and pull the dirt in after him.

“I’d feel more comfortable if he stayed here instead of god knows where they’re keeping him now,” she said, finally, and Tony put his face in his hands. She was giving him an excuse, a sacrifice to the towering monster that was his pride, and they both knew it. Half of him wanted to get down on his knees and thank her and the other half felt ripped out of its shell and burning in the light of her regard.

“I don’t know what I’m doing, anymore,” he admitted. “I don’t--” He could feel tears welling behind his eyelids, and it was the second--third, it was the third--time just that day, and what was happening to him? He should probably rethink the meds they’d tried to give him, but then he’d be useless in the shop and not much better in the field, and that was its own slow suffocation. “I don’t know how to fix this.”

“We’ll figure it out,” Pepper sighed, squeezing his shoulder. He leaned into her, tried to breathe, inhaled the scent of her hair. She always knew what to do. Always had, probably always would. Why didn’t he listen to her more often? He should. “When’s the last time you slept?”

Tony thought about it for a second, then scoffed when he realized. The last time he’d really slept had been the last time he and Steve had fucked. He’d worn himself out, finally, that was all, except that it wasn’t and he knew it.

“Um. It’s been a while. I think.” He shook himself, feeling like someone had walked over his grave. “Yesterday morning. I took a nap.”

“Come on, then,” she said, prodding him to his feet. “We’ll try to take another nap, and then we’ll try to have some real food, and then we’ll go from there.”

A brief, wild urge to recoil, to bolt, to lash out shot through him, then died on the vine when he couldn’t find the words to give it a voice. That had been happening a lot lately, hadn’t it? Ragged piles of emotion he couldn’t get the shape of, never mind explain. He was going to burn himself out, if he kept this up. Tony wiped his palms on his shirt and took Pepper’s hand.

* * *

Tony stripped off Steve’s shirt and tossed it over a chair, then moved on to his pants. Steve ran his fingers through Tony’s hair, gentle and slow, and Tony batted his hand away and rocked up on his toes to kiss him, one hand still busy with his zipper. 

Ridiculous, programming a robot to be affectionate. Ridiculous, caring if a robot was affectionate toward him.

Tony pulled away and shoved Steve hard onto the bed, ripped off his jeans and boxers, tossed everything haphazardly onto the floor. He shed his own clothes without ceremony or any attempt to put on a show. The pinnacle of self-deception: trying to arouse a robot.

Steve was watching him with narrowed eyes and a hard mouth when Tony turned back, ready to climb onto the bed.

“What the fuck’s gotten into you today?” Steve demanded.

“Language,” Tony retorted, straddling his thighs. A hand splayed across Tony’s sternum stopped him cold when he tried to lean forward. The LMD wasn’t as strong as the original, but he was still strong enough to put somebody through a wall if it came down to it.

“Is it the shield?” Steve asked. “Because yes, it’s bullshit, but you’re mad at Ross, not me.”

“Who said I’m mad at you?” Tony snorted. 

He wondered what would happen if he told Steve he wanted to switch to robot mode, turn off the imitation-human protocols, go object-not-subject. _Just stop talking for a few minutes, let me come, we can both get on with our day..._ Probably something horrible, like a dead-eyed Ken-doll routine that would kill any erection not belonging to a necrophiliac.

“Fine. You’re thrilled to see me, couldn’t be happier, you always act like this when you’re tickled pink with somebody.” Steve scoffed and let his hand drop to the mattress. “Let’s get this over with, then.”

Tony braced his hands on either side of Steve’s head, closed his eyes, and took a breath. 

_Grudging resignation_ , he thought bitterly. _The ultimate aphrodisiac._

“You turned down the room Pepper offered,” he said quietly.

Steve tucked his arms under his head, muscles rippling under synthetic skin, and studied Tony’s face. “You’re upset I didn’t take her up on it? I figured you couldn’t find a decent way to shut it down when she suggested it.”

Tony let his lips twist. Decent. Interesting word to apply, when he was crouched over a barely-willing electronic replica of Steve with a barely-wilted hard-on.

“It’s a solid plan,” Tony pointed out. “This is the Avengers’ base. You’re an Avenger. You shouldn’t be living in a… a…”

He realized he had no idea where the State Department’s goons actually stowed their LMDs, off the clock.

“Broom closet,” Steve supplied.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Tony asked, shocked.

“Yes.”

Tony glared down at him. “That’s not funny.”

“It’s a little funny,” Steve said. His smirk faded, replaced by a more serious look. “But I’m not an Avenger.”

“Okay, then you’re _impersonating_ an Avenger,” Tony grunted. “Which, if we’re going to do it at all, we definitely shouldn’t half-ass it.”

“And you want me living here.”

Not a question. A statement, an observation. Tony’s jaw tightened, and he looked away. Then Steve’s fingers were cupping his chin, turning his face back until he was meeting Steve’s eyes.

“I’d prefer having you here.” It didn’t feel as difficult to admit as he’d have thought it would, just a few minutes ago.

“Okay,” Steve said, nodding slightly.

“And I’m sorry,” Tony continued, swallowing around the knot in his throat. “About before.” 

Ridiculous, apologizing to a robot.

Steve curled his fingers gently around the nape of Tony’s neck and pulled him down for a slow kiss.

“It’s okay,” he said, the ghost of a smile curling his lips. “Just don’t let it happen again.”

Tony rested his cheek on Steve’s broad chest and listened to the steady rhythm of his fake heart. _Just don’t let it happen again._ Such a low bar. He could handle that much, couldn’t he?

* * *

“You drew this?” Tony asked, running the edge of his finger along the page. Pepper smiled back at him, black and white and blue-ruled lines. She looked like a Gibson girl, and Steve shrugged.

“She said it was all right.”

“It’s just…” _Bloodless_.

“Off,” Steve said. He looked away, his cheeks coloring faintly. Tony wondered what Steve’s face would feel like if he touched it, if it would feel warmer than usual. “I know. I can’t seem to do anything about it, though, and good luck getting tech support on a bug that far down the priority chain.”

“I didn’t know you could draw, that’s all,” Tony murmured. Steve was a marvel of modern engineering, and he was embarrassed by the coldness of his artistic endeavors. Vision had complained of something similar, hadn’t he? Tony vaguely recalled blowing through on some errand or other that had seemed monumentally important at the time, Vision and Wanda deep in conversation over an almost-finished painting, Vision asking for his opinion…

Tony didn’t remember what he’d said. It was entirely possible he hadn’t said anything, had just deferred the question to Wanda and breezed out the door.

He tossed the notebook onto the table and leaned into Steve, kissing him. That was something, at least, that he was sure of. He could kiss Steve, and Steve would respond; he could lock the door, and Steve would slide to his knees. It seemed criminal, that he could say, “Please, I need you right now.” and “Please, I want you.” and “Yes, just like that, keep going, please.” 

In his head, the real Steve was turning away, face scarlet, hands curled into fists, in love with someone else, angry with Tony for making the offer when Tony was in love with someone else, too. In his head, there was a wall of preemptive sarcasm and bitterness and detachment just high enough to slow him down in case he ever got stupid enough to think about propositioning the real Steve.

Here and now, an LMD only distinguishable from the real thing by the fact that Tony could say “please” and that he could say “okay” was fitting his fingertips into the dip in Tony’s spine and holding Tony close and kissing him back.

“You want to lock the door?” Tony asked, dipping his head to suck at Steve’s throat.

“You’ve got a one-track mind, sometimes, you know that?” Steve admonished. He smiled and hit the lock, then dragged Tony back into a warm embrace.

“I’ve been told that a time or two, yeah,” Tony said, relaxing into it. Was it so bad, to know what he wanted? Focusing-- _fixating,_ when it went on a little too long--had gotten him pretty far in life. MIT. Bern. Afghanistan. New York. Sokovia. Siberia. Steve’s deft fingers on the buttons of his shirt. 

Was it so bad, to not want to think for half an hour? To forget for ten minutes here, the space of an orgasm there?

Tony bared his throat, and Steve laughed and kissed his way down it, nibbling gently at the junction of neck and shoulder. Tony clung to him like a life preserver, and this Steve let him, this Steve undid his belt buckle with practiced hands, slid his jeans down over his hips carefully and slowly instead of stopping and demanding to know what was wrong, if Tony was all right. This Steve got down on his knees, ran his tongue along Tony’s cock until he was finally, gloriously hard, sucked it into his mouth. This Steve didn’t ask “Are you sure?” and “Are you okay?” and “Have you been sleeping? Eating? Have you seen a doctor lately? You know you don’t have to deal with this alone, right?”, lacked the scalding acuity to clock himself as a potential problem, and Tony remembered why he’d fallen in love with sports cars when he was a boy and whiskey when he was a college student and the suit when he’d known better.

Beautiful, terrible things that didn’t know or care what his limits were--that would never ask him to be no more than a man, to be careful of himself.

Tony ran his fingers through Steve’s hair, cradled the back of his head, and thrust until Steve’s lips were wrapped around his hilt. No gag reflex, no need to breathe. Tony could slide as far down Steve’s throat as he liked, for as long as he wanted. He didn’t, because it turned out that some tiny lobe of his brain refused to believe he wasn’t about to choke someone out on his cock and wasn’t above giving him a panic attack over it, but the fact that he _could_ still counted for... rather a lot, it turned out. 

Steve’s hands wrapped around his hips, fingertips kneading the swell of Tony’s ass, and he sucked harder. His mouth was hot and wet and perfect, and Tony groaned.

For that handful of moments, this was all there was in the world--Steve’s tongue curling around him, Steve’s lips stretched around him, Steve’s throat swallowing around him. The catalog of sins and omissions and mistakes and problems crowding his mind receded, stilled, fell silent. It wasn’t real, but it was close enough to let him breathe, close enough to think _I love you_ and mean it, close enough to feel whole. When Tony came, the only thing he wanted was to do it again.

* * *

“Would it be a bad idea if I…” Tony drummed a pen against his workbench, realized he was doing it too hard, and let the pen drop. Pepper watched him, waiting. “If I, uh. I was thinking.” 

He rubbed his face, the grime of a whole day in the shop tacky and awful under his fingers. He should have waited until after he’d had a shower to talk to Pepper. Of course, then he’d have talked himself into waiting until after dinner, and then he’d have gone and found Steve again, and then he’d have crawled into bed with Pepper, and then it would have been another day, and Pepper would have things to do to keep the company running and the Avengers in the UN’s good graces and…

“I can’t go to Wakanda,” Tony said, not looking at her, “but I could send an LMD to Wakanda. And Steve won’t talk to me, but this would be _like_ talking to me, and maybe--”

He broke off at her expression, and she reached across the table and took his hand before he could retreat.

“It’s not the worst idea you’ve ever had,” Pepper said quietly. “But have you tried calling Steve and asking him? To talk?”

Tony hadn’t, because he didn’t know what he would do if he called Steve on the ‘text me in case of emergency’ phone and Steve hung up on him, and he wasn’t in any hurry to find out. Tony hadn’t, because he didn’t know what he would do if he called Steve on the ‘text me in case of emergency’ phone and Steve didn’t hang up on him, but his track record spoke for itself. Tony hadn’t, because Tony was occasionally capable of learning from his mistakes.

An LMD with all of Tony’s charm and maybe half his penchant for self-sabotage plus a subroutine to derail him before he said anything he’d regret for the rest of his life, though? A robot which would never mean to say “I’m sorry.” or “This is all going wrong.” and hear “Oh, fuck you.” slip out of its mouth instead? That might get somewhere. And if it didn’t, then at least it wouldn’t be Tony carrying around the memory of what it looked like when Steve accepted his apology and declined to forgive him, or asked T’Challa to deport him, or spit in his face.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Tony said, finally. “I don’t have, you know, the greatest of luck with important phone calls.”

He gave her a wan smile, and she patted the back of his hand.

“If I send a robot, Ross can hardly complain about the Avengers engaging in unauthorized foreign excursions, and T’Challa won’t have to deal with any diplomatic weirdness, and if Steve punches it so hard it falls apart, they can just recycle it.” 

Steve wouldn’t do any such thing, and Tony knew it, but it was easier to say that than to verbalize why Steve freezing it out would somehow be more awful. He’d been dealing with people wanting to hit him since college. People ignoring him cut deeper.

“Steve is not going to punch it,” Pepper sighed. She called up an answering smile and let go of his hand, circling around to meet him. “Did you want to have lunch first, or are you jumping right into this?”

“I think I’ve got time for lunch.” He looked down at his clothes. “How do you feel about delivery?”

“Delivery would be great.” She kissed him, gentle and warm, and hooked a finger into his belt loop. “Why don’t I go call, and you can take a shower? And then you can get down to stealing classified government technology and repurposing it for clandestine international missions.”

Tony chewed his lip and couldn’t keep back a genuine smile. “What would I do without you?”

“Look like a hobo and starve, probably,” Pepper told him.


End file.
